Congratulations Dot (PolkaDot)! The Scrap Girls Team has chosen Dot as the Member of the Month for August!

Dot has been a faithful member of Scrap Girls since joining in August 2009! She is very active in our daily challenges. Dot can be found leaving love in the gallery and is a friendly face in the chat room! She is full of helpful information, too! Dot is a huge asset and Scrap Girls just wouldn't be the same without her!

Dot will receive a $10 gift certificate to the Scrap Girls Boutique and has the honor of wearing the Member of the Month blinkie!

When you have a few minutes Dot, please tell us a little about yourself and share a link to your favorite layout! Thank you for making Scrap Girls a wonderful, friendly place! Congratulations!!

LOL, I read the posts in weird order!! Finished my shopping spree and was looking for an old LO to find the name of a style I used to send info to my NJ shore loving friend Marilyn/MariJ..... and then found this thread! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! I am happy and giddy with the honor! I just love it here and feel as if I know you all and as if it's a second home. Thanks so very much to everyone for your kind and sweet comments. I feel the same way about all of you!!

Of all days to be signed out! I rarely sign off the message board, but as many of my night owl, insomniac friends here know, I have not been sleeping. So, last night I took a double dose of Benadryl. Long story short, it made me tired and very stupid, but I still couldn't sleep. Today I was just dopey, literally I guess. Anyway, please excuse the delay in expressing my gratitude! (I won't be taking Benadryl again and promise to try to be a good MOM!)

It was fun and funny to look through my gallery while trying to find that style! There are quite a few of my LOs for which I don't feel the love- LOL. But, I usually learned something new in doing them, so it's all good. I don't know if I have a favorite, but if I have to name one, I do like this layout of DGS#1: Loved Grandson. I remember trying to concentrate on creating a mood of quiet and calm. I was so happy to be able to correct the unappealing bg and distracting shirt in the photo using techniques I've learned here. I almost always use a SG style or action on my photos. I loved using the brushes in a more subtle way, loved that Katie Grace had suggested the theme in a Friday challenge (or I would not have used arrows) and loved using things like the branches as a symbol of family branches. I liked using the faded geometric arrow brushes in the bg and along the borders. Anyway, I remember while working on this LO feeling very appreciative of Scrap Girls and the staff and designers and teachers and members who have helped me so much and shared so generously in my quest to learn the software and digi-scrapping, and who all contributed in some way to this layout. I like the photo, like the layout and like the memory of how happy I felt while working on it.

A little about me....night owl and retired RN. (Too many years of shift work and now I can't sleep!) I had the wonderful gift of being the mother of two boys and one girl, all grown and gone from home now and living happy lives. I am so happy to be the grandmother of three boys whom you all know by now. Grandchildren are just too much fun! DD is expecting #4 on September 1 (scheduled C-Section,) if not sooner, so I will be off to babysit at the end of the month. I'll need the rest of September to recover. I met my one and only Ed in 1966 while in high school, and we started dating then. After HS, he went off to spend time with Uncle Sam, then I went off to nursing school, then he returned from the Army and went back to college. We finally married in 1975 and are still happy. I worked in and loved nursing since my first candy striping job at age 14, but also always enjoyed sewing, so about ten years ago finally left the nursing world to the younger, energetic girls and boys and took a job teaching sewing/computerized machine embroidery/machine software for a local sewing machine dealership. That was a lot of fun and I made many good friends through it. I co-taught with a wonderful woman who was my polar opposite and it worked out so, so great! She is very visual and doesn't read nor follow directions, whereas I love to read and write directions and am more verbal. Our classes were pretty successful and we each had our own groupies- LOL! I think that's one of the reasons I like it here so well.....Scrap Girls appeals to both sides of my brain. Two years ago I was immobile after knee surgery and while on the couch heard the name Scrap Girls mentioned on a BYU Scrapbooking TV episode (which I had never seen before.) I looked it up on the computer and the rest is history. I think of all the hobbies I have tried, this has been the most exciting and my very favorite.

I like to cook but don't do it so much anymore (it is harder to cook for two!) I despise gardening of any kind- LOL! I like Boston Terriers. I am trying to downsize our house, which is so hard. I love to travel since I overcame a fear of flying in my 40's. I used to play an accordion! I taught myself to play the piano a few years ago, but didn't keep it up and now forget it again. I liked to paint but gave it up because I tended to overwork the paintings when I just had to fix one more thing....a reason I think digi-scrapping is so great. I enjoy Project Runway on TV. I read any kind of instructional book or magazine. I am self taught on the computer and learned to use the Help Menus a lot, and I do like to just try anything and everything on the computer. I love problem solving. I go regularly for all health screenings and preventive care and encourage everyone I know to do the same. I am always battling my weight. In general, I take after my father and a grandfather whose nickname was "Hap" for happy. I am very grateful for my life.

Oops! I was supposed to tell a little. Uh-oh, need to stop! I hope you glazed over and stopped reading a while back there! For those who are up all night, it was something to read- LOL.

Loved reading about your life Dot. Makes you so much more real. What a lovely happy life you have. I feel the same with mine. Congrats once again. P.S. Happily for us insomniacs there is usually someone on line to communicate with which is comforting. Kay

Oh Dot you are a most wonderful choice for this honor!!! Many congratulations to you.
And I LOVE your little, tell us about yourself. I think I already have guessed that happy was one of your attributes by all the happiness you spread around SG's!!
Enjoy your MOM month.

Well Dot, once again congrats. I loved reading about you. Eyes did not glaze over at all. Very interesting. I think I must come to you for lessons in writing. I tend to write in short hand. Trying to do better but not succeeding. Enjoy your month.